Penance
by StarbuckScout
Summary: Story is set pre-Stabler exit, when all was wonderful. An old adversary has made his way back into Olivia and Elliot's lives. The rules of engagement have been erased. Richard White had fun stalking Olivia early in her career at SVU, and after years of watching her relationship with Elliot grow past the platonic, he knew that two would be more fun than one.
1. Chapter 1

**Story Summary: **An old adversary has made his way back into Olivia and Elliot's lives. The rules of engagement have been erased. Richard White had fun stalking Olivia early in her career at SVU, and after years of watching her relationship with Elliot grow past the platonic, he knew that two would be more fun than one.

**1-6 Bullpen**

Olivia Benson walked into the squad room as if in a trance. Her brown eyes empty of emotion, her hair working on three days of neglect.

"Anything?" Broke the eerie silence of a normally boisterous 1-6. Cragen looked at her with the sad puppy dog eyes he reserved for deaths and grave injuries.

"Liv, we, uh, no. Nothing. Its cold. Munch and Fin have been canvassing along with more than our fair share of unis. I've leaked bits to the press to get word out. Elliot's been missing for…"

Cragen's update was punctuated by the sound of Olivia's body dropping into her chair, her face stoically gazing forward into nothingness. Silence. The slow, steady whirring of the ceiling fan affording the only evidence that time was indeed still passing.

"Elliot. I let my guard down. It was my fault. Mine. He's out there. Somewhere…" Liv's voice began trembling and hitching. Her words ceased, replaced by her trademark nose crinkling and a forced, defeated sigh. Cragen looked at his detective and started to give her what he knew were powerless words of encouragement. Liv's body was taking a massive hit from her emotional state. She had consumed nothing but caffeinated beverages for the past 72 odd hours, and only because they served to keep her moving. Sleep had become a foreign concept; her dark eyes and pallid face were becoming a growing physical representation of a gauge.

Tears of hurt and frustration pushed their way out over the rim of her eyes and began to blur the inked pages beneath her.

"Shit…shit…" Liv slammed her fists on the desk, showing the first signs of emotion in days. Se wiped her face with her sleeve and silently moved past the captain and towards the coffee pot. She watched the slow, monotonous drips of the brewing coffee, turning into an hourglass in her mind. Every drip representing another minute Elliot was in the custody of Richard White. Running her fingers through her matted hair morphed into scratching and pulling- taking her frustration to a new physical level. Seeing the ticking self-destructive bomb, Cragen gently pulled her arms down and walked her into his office. He sat her down in the chair, still shocked by the passivity of the usually independent, strong willed detective, and sat on the corner of his desk.

"It should have been me, Captain," Liv stated in an eerily low and quiet tone, "he grabbed him out of MY bed. I know he originally thought of taking me. Instead he was given a better avenue to torture me."

"Liv, you know you can't focus on this. It is not your fault. Beating yourself up over this is not going to help find Elliot." The minute he finished his last sentence Don knew he had made a mistake. Olivia leapt out of the chair verbally lashing at her supervisor.

"What, you think I'm not doing enough?! I KNOW I'm not, but I also don't know what else to do." Tears now free flowing down her reddened cheeks, flushed with anger.

"Olivia, I'm just trying to tell you we are all doing the best we can. I wish there was more to say."

They were interrupted by Fin sprinting through the precinct and bursting into the office, " I got it! New Jersey staties saw a van matching White's description driving to a pier in…"

Liv grabbed Fin's arm and charged out the door shouting back, "Call the Jersey police and tell them we are on our way!" She grabbed the keys out of his hand, practically growling when he tried to reclaim them.

**Unknown Location**

"Liv?" Elliot moaned as she struggled to regain consciousness. Slowly his senses began to kick in. The feel of a rough fabric over his eyes and the minor throbbing of a tight knot at the back of his head brought Elliot Stabler to the realization that the makeshift blindfold was not a Benson creation. He panicked once he attempted to stretch his body. Reaching with his arms and legs brought instantaneous electric waves of pain. Elliot's hands and feet were bound together by thin piano wire and connected to each other, leaving him in an awkward sitting position with his knees to his chest.

**The Docks**

The police standard Impala raced through the docks by the riverbed. Olivia drove furiously, off-roading through the urban jungle of scrap metal and broken shipping crates. Fin shifted in the passenger seat, not knowing if or what to say. He glanced at his interim partner, taking note of her ghostly white knuckles and quivering chin. The pregnant silence thankfully ended as Olivia cut over to an alleyway between two warehouses.

" Liv, there!" Fin pointed to the white van parked in the corner of the alley, not quite hidden behind the rusted navy dumpster. The car screeched to a halt, Olivia escaping the confines of the car as she threw it into park. Ripping her gun from its holster she charges the van, Fin not far behind and yet completely forgotten. Liv versus the van. She had stripped all forms of protocol from her brain, only working from the motive of finding Elliot—alive. Death was not an option or thought she was entertaining.

"El!" Olivia yelled as she violently tugged on the handle to the back of van. Fin was soon behind her lending his help to the locked door. She quickly moved over to the driver's side door, hands holding her weapon in a vice grip. Shaking with adrenaline she peered into the front of the van, making sure there were no occupants. Finding no one, she tugged at the door in vain. Frustrated, she shot at the uncooperative door and ripped it open.

"Liv?! You ok?" Fin asked, knowing the answer from the sound of the busted door hitting against the side of the van. She jumped into the van, clawing at the draped fabric that kept her from the back of the van. Ripping it down, wide-eyed and panting, she let loose a chilling, guttural scream.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER 2**

Fin raced to Liv's position in the front of the van to find her wide-eyed and visibly shaking. He turned to see what had caused such a reaction, choking back a gasp himself. The back of the van was darkened thanks to a black fabric that covered the windows, floors, and ceiling; the only light afforded to them came from the windshield. The low light that passed over Olivia's shoulder accented the sharp features of the body before her. At first glance it could have been taken for a morbidly placed mannequin; further time showed that she was not that lucky.

"Oh my God," Olivia whispered shaking, her voice hoarse from screaming. She reached over to touch the body, not quite believing that the body of Brian Cassidy, former 1-6 detective as well as her former lover, in front of her was real. He was clothed in a typical earth toned suit and was bound, she knew, even though she could not see behind his body.

Brian was positioned on his knees, his arms and legs tied behind him to maintain the awkward pose. His neck had fallen to the right, slightly leaned forward. His face was already growing pale, his body slowly going into rigor. His glazed eyes echoed the pain that Olivia felt in her heart. She too, guiltily, felt the pain of death, as if she had suffered as well. While she felt for Brian, as she would any person who had died in the manner he had, she also sighed in relief. A distant part of her brain told her that her immediate feelings were due to the fact that she was over taxed and unable to appropriately respond to the issue at hand- her heart on the other hand took over, wagging its moral finger at her, telling her she was selfishly glad it wasn't the man she was currently sleeping with, Elliot Stabler.

"Liv," Fin said, interrupting her internal battle, "Look at his mouth."

"What?" Olivia questioned, still trying to shake her head out of its philosophizing and back into the situation at hand. Fin pointed redundantly at Cassidy's lips, which were slightly parted in an oddly manipulated manner. Olivia, out of force of habit, reached into her coat to retrieve a latex glove, snapping it into place. She reached forward, eyes squinting out of both curiosity and lack of light, as her body's movement blocked the best lighting from the front of the van. As her fingers reached his lips she paused for a moment, absentmindedly noting the subtle intimacy of the gesture. She checked her emotions and continued onward, her touch moving from questionable caress to professional detachment.

"What the fuck," she whispered out loud, not necessarily directed towards Fin, but more as an observational reaction.

"What, Liv," Fin asked exasperatedly, as she was blocking any solid view he had of her actions. He tried to move in forward to get a glimpse of what she was reacting to.

"There's something here, I think," Liv said, her voice trailing off as she reached into Cassidy's mouth grasping for a possible foreign object. Striking gold, she successfully pulled out what looked to be a wadded up piece of paper wedged in between Cassidy's tongue and the roof of his mouth.

She pulled her body back out into the front seat, away from the corpse, trying to carefully untangle the page. As she smoothed the last of the paper out her mind finally processed the words that were precisely written, centered in perfect cursive across the lined paper:

_Olivia,_

_I have provided you with a little blast from your past. I hope you enjoy this little taste of what is to come. I do miss you, Detective Benson, as clichéd as that may sound, and eagerly await our future time together. You never told me how much of a screamer your little boy toy Elliot could be though. I appreciated that most welcome of surprises. I hope you realize that this is your punishment for breaking the most sacred of rules. I am slightly disappointed in you, Olivia, tisk, tisk, sleeping with your barely divorced partner, naively thinking that he could ever want you for longer than a rebound. The boys at One PP do frown on that sort of behavior. I cannot wait to see the kind of things your guilt will paint across you. I look forward even more so to your penance._

_Yours, _

_ Richard_

Olivia pulled the incriminating piece of evidence to her chest in vain, knowing that she could not get it past Fin, or better, let White get it past Forensics. Taking his cue from her verbal unresponsiveness, Fin gingerly reached over to pull the paper from Olivia's white knuckled grip. He passed a hand over his head, expelling a deep breath as he finished reading the note.

"Don't," Olivia said her voice hitching, interrupting Fin's attempt at speech, "I can't do this. I can't. It's all my fault. Me. I knew it would happen, everything I love…" her voice broke as her words turned into tears. She did not attempt to hide the tears that began to fall at a faster pace down her cheeks. Instead she began to rub her temples with her hands, slowly at first, and then furiously, her movements not giving her their intended relief, but a sense of overwhelming anxiety.

"Hey now, baby girl, this isn't you," Fin said soothingly, trying to calm her from her point of near hyperventilation. "This fucker is sick, he's just playin' with you. We'll find Stabler." He patted her shoulder in an attempt to pacify her long enough to head back to the car to call for Forensics and back up.

Olivia nodded, a part of her seeing through his words and actions, knowing she would be giving him the same bullshit talk if he were in his shoes. _But he would never have been stupid enough to do what you did. _Her conscience taunted her, confining her to what White had said, putting her propensity to guilt into gear.

Taking her nod as a green light to leave her with the van Fin jogged off to the Impala for the radio.

Olivia turned her body sideways in the van, unable to look back at Cassidy again, her guilt slowly manifesting itself into self deprecating hatred, as well as mentally lifting her from awareness of her surroundings. She rubbed her hands over her face, closing her eyes, wishing to be back in her apartment, _no, THEIR apartment, _her head shaking as she mentally corrected herself. Her closed eyes served as a temporary theater screen, playing back the night before Elliot went missing.

"_Come back here," Elliot demanded, taunting her, naked but for a light top sheet, from her disheveled bed. She hesitated from the doorway, teetering on the edge of her desire to rejoin him in bed or to take a shower and attempt to go to sleep._

"_We both have to go in for six tomorrow, well this morning, Elliot! It's already three and you know I need to make a solid try at sleep or else not even Munch's coffee will keep me awake for our stakeout," she said, trying to rationalize her step back towards the bathroom to both herself and Elliot. _

"_Fine," he sighed with a telling smirk in his mouth and a twinkle in his blue eyes, knowing this battle was not going to be won as she did make a solid point, "but your ass is mine when we wrap up tomorrow night."_

Olivia eyes opened as she mentally slapped herself out of her flashback for thinking they had the luxury of thoughts like that, of thinking that they were guaranteed to be back where they were after eighteen hours on the job. Anything could happen at any given moment, to either of them, and she had- _no, they both had- _forgotten that. Her body facing the passenger door her arms fell to her knees, bending to allow her hands to hold the weight of her head. Her actions were stopped mid-motion as a smooth, low voice breathed close to her ear.

"You did take your time getting here," Richard White whispered with a sense of triumph over his delicate and complicated plan. Olivia had no time to react, her senses still on overload; her body lethargic in its actions. She barely even felt the needle slip into her neck right before she passed, almost willingly, into blackness.


	3. Chapter 3

AN HOUR EARLIER…

Elliot groaned as the stark lighting hit his eyes as the blindfold was ripped from its purposed placement on his face. His eyes barely registered his surroundings, just enough to confirm his assumption that he was placed on a wired cot with an incredibly thin mattress. His body attempted to stretch his sore muscles out in a subconscious reaction to the release from the blindfold. The piano wire that was still in place dug itself further into his wrists and ankles, his blood forming a thin sheen. Before he could react to the wire he simultaneously felt and heard the crack of a strong backhand against his cheek.

"Wakey, wakey, Detective, we have lots to do today," whispered Richard White into Elliot's left ear. Elliot flinched with the contact of White's breath against his ear lobe. This visit from White marked only the third since he had been dragged to this location, and the first in what Elliot could only assume was about twenty hours.

"Oh, come on, Detective, you don't have any questions to ask me," questioned White, as he circled around Elliot's cot almost drinking in the detective's bodily responses to the new stimuli of lighting.

"I…" Elliot interrupted his own retort, coughing from his unused vocal chords and lack of fluid intake. After clearing his throat he paused then responded with the tone of voice, almost an octave lower than his own, he only used with the most heinous of perps, "Where is she, you bastard? If you have her I will kill you with my bare hands."

"Oh, Elliot, or El, can I call you El? I realllly like it when I hear Olivia practically purr that one syllable nickname," White said, gloating, trying to get a further reaction out of an already distressed Stabler, "It seems as though she only reserves that for you in the bedroom."

Elliot's body reacted faster than his brain, just as White had anticipated. Any attempt at harm against Olivia caused his body with physical force. He knew, in a hidden corner of his brain, that it was his military training that invoked this hero/damsel reaction; a reaction that Olivia would have torn him a new one over. This time it caused him more harm than good, the further strain against his bindings causing new blood to seep over old. He hissed and mentally kicked himself for falling for White's simple psychological taunting. He knew that in order to stay aware, to stay above White and ahead of him, he had to let such novice taunting go.

"Where is she," Elliot asked, finally feeling as though his brain was becoming less and less foggy from the drugs White had injected into him a day, or was it only hours, ago. His mind drifted to trying to figure out the timing in relation to the effects of the drugs he still slightly felt. White slapped the mattress, getting Elliot's head back to its primary focus- locating his partner, no ex-partner, current girlfriend, his mental slip making him believe that it was possible he didn't have quite the clarity of mind he just thought he had.

"Oh, El, of course she isn't here," White said, his voice dripping with power, "why would I do something like that? So soon? You really think I have no willpower, no stamina?" White's voice elevated in volume, keying Elliot in on a possible future splinter in White's armor, "This is a marathon, Detective, not a sprint. I would not waste my energy on just a few fun filled days with Olivia, or yourself. You two seem to think you work best together, and I just want to see for myself what that actually means."

"You sick fuck," Elliot growled.

"Now, now, Detective, don't go getting your panties in a bunch," White responded as walked towards a table set off in the corner of the room. He grabbed a pair of panties and duct tape from a selection of items on the worn, wooden table.

Elliot's vision had improved enough to further check out his surroundings as he watched White's movements in the corner of the room. The room itself was not large, he estimated about the size of an interrogation room at the 1-6, and the walls were possibly made of cement. There was a single entrance, a door that, as Elliot squinted, looked to be made of metal, with a padlock hanging from it. The lighting he originally took as blinding, after minutes of adjusting, was merely a single overhead light source connected to a rather low ceiling and not the original natural lighting that he first assumed. This, he realized, was a pretty big issue. This confirmed his fears after hearing White's speech, that this was extremely premeditated and intricately planned, with an end game.

Elliot's mind reeled from the possible scenarios he was concocting in his head, and he missed White's actions at the table, also missing the remaining contents. White crossed the room with a bit of a swagger, excited to start the next step of his plan.

Elliot's bindings kept his body in control. His knees were hugged to his chest, keeping him on the cot or else on the cold floor. Knowing this, he did not resist, as he wanted to when White approached him with duct tape in one hand and what looked to be his favorite pair of Liv's panties in his other. His eyes widened and his mind split into two running scenarios. One, White had Olivia and was using this as proof. Two, he retraced his memory to the last time he had seen those panties in use. It was about a week ago, and the damned piece of evergreen fabric that played off of her tanned skin so well had teased him into being seduced in her kitchen. The dinner had burned, but ordering takeout an hour later was damn well worth it. His mind came back to focus, pulling itself from the beginning of an incredibly good memory.

"Am I interrupting something," White asked knowingly, "a flashback perhaps? If you are thinking about Monday evening, I can completely agree. You were both at your best that night."

Before he could respond, White stuffed the panties into Elliot's mouth, quickly securing it with strong duct tape. Elliot's face turned shades of red, not in embarrassment, but in his trademark rage. A vein became more and more pronounced on his forehead. Without the ability to speak Elliot's voice was garbled, his eyes telling more than words even could have.

"I figured a little bit of Liv would soothe you for awhile, was I wrong El," White asked in a mocking manner, "I took them from her basket, you know, the dirty laundry basket on the left of her washing machine? I couldn't decide between these or the black lace ones, my favorite. I took these because I knew they were your favorite. Do you want to know how I know that?"

Elliot willed his body not to react, to try to lower his rapid heart rate, to mask his reaction. It didn't work.

"It was obvious, El, you always came faster and harder when you had those at the starting line," White stated as he pointed to Elliot's gag, "Well, that and the fact that your reaction triggered one in our dear Olivia. She does make the most perfect of scratch marks across your back."

Elliot closed his eyes, chanting inwardly, telling himself to calm down and to think. White was giving him an awful lot of information on his methods of stalking them, and it was quite possibly a ticket to his freedom and possibly Olivia's…wherever she was.

It was almost as if White could hear Elliot's thoughts, that he could pick up the slightest thought of his detective.

"Ah yes, I almost forgot," he said as he tilted his head, slowly closing his eyes, picturing his next task, "our Olivia." White backed away from Elliot's cot and moved towards the center of the room, under the light. The light cast an unholy halo around White, which was juxtaposed with his next question, one that would haunt Elliot for his remaining days. White took a deep breath and then cast his eyes to the other side of the room, to a wall with carefully placed hooks, a wooden school desk chair, and the twin to Elliot's cot.

"Seriously, Mr. Senior Detective, you missed the seating arraignments? I had hoped you would have caught on sooner," White said chastising Elliot for his lax investigative skills as he walked out the door, leaving a wake of palpable fear behind.


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Note: Just to clarify, years ago I had the user name, BenCab, however I deleted that email address and couldn't get back into that account, so I'm using this account instead. I stopped writing this story in 2009, silly graduation and moving got in my way, so I am trying to catch up. I have the rest of it mapped out (all seven-ish remaining chapters) and will post chapters as soon as I write them. I'm a bit rusty, so please bear with me!

**Chapter 4**

Elliot knew the scariest thing to be was hopeful. A state of hopefulness blinds you with thoughts of a positive future, while masking the true present. A present that leaves you dangling over a cliff waiting for death or a hand to mercifully pull you back. Hopeful is for the amateurs. The experts know it is a psychological emotion that almost always lands you splayed out across the rocks on the bottom of the cliff.

Fuck this, Elliot thought as he pushed all of the nonsense drivel out of his head, Olivia can take care of herself. She's fine. She's handled worse. She's good. She's fine. She's…

**Olivia's Apartment **

Olivia woke up immediately thrashing her limbs to stop White from attacking her only to discover he wasn't there and she wasn't at the harbor anymore. Instead, she was in her own bed and it was only the harsh sunlight streaming through her bedroom blinds that was assaulting her. It took her a few seconds to get her bearings. Brian. Dead. Elliot. Captured. She slowly sat up, feeling like she had gotten through five rounds with her trainer. She looked down and was relieved to find that at least she was still fully clothed. As she stretched her neck from side to side to work out the kinks, the why and the how of her arrival in her bedroom flooded back into her head. _White. Needle. Elliot. _

Her first instinct was to jump out of bed and grab for the gun she left in her bedside table drawer. She winced in pain as whatever drug White had injected her with still affected her muscles. The gun was gone, as she had expected. She crossed the room to find that the phone line was severed. Okay, she thought as she shook her head and tried to get a better mental grip on the situation, why am I here? Feeling naked without her firearm, she decided to clear the rest of her apartment just in case White had any other surprises lying in wait.

Nothing. Well, she had found a few bugs that she knew had to be White's, but other than the audio monitoring devices, she found nothing. No traps, no White ready to spring from behind the shower curtain like a clichéd horror film villain. Absolutely nothing.

It had still only been three days since this nightmare started, so the apartment was as she and Elliot had left it—takeout still on the coffee table in the living room and errant clothing strewn about in the direction of her bedroom. "Fuuuccckkkk!" Olivia screamed in the middle of her living room as she picked up a glass of stale beer from the side table and hurled it against the wall. The impact of the glass against the brick felt soothing, but she knew it was selfish. She needed to call it in. At the very least, she remembered that Fin had absolutely no idea where she was and had probably called the cavalry in to find her. Sans landline and cell phone, she ran out of the apartment to her neighbor's place.

"Hi, Mary," she said, thankful that her elderly friend was home. "My phone line is dead and I seem to be missing my cell phone. Could I borrow yours to make a call? It's an emergency and I have to get in touch with work."

"Oh, sweetheart, your friend there, Mr. White said you were having phone issues and asked me if I was going to be around this afternoon in case you needed any help. Here, come in and you can make any call you need."

Liv froze wondering if it was a trick or a mind fuck or both. Pushing her better instincts aside, she walked into Mary's apartment and called Fin's cell.

"Fin? It's Liv. Yes, I'm okay. I'm back at my apartment—no I don't know how I got here, but can you come pick me up? I found some bugs in a few of my rooms, so call in Forensics as well."

Olivia thanked her neighbor and walked back into her apartment. The whole thing was surreal. What kind of psychopath stops mid-capture? A fucking patient one. He caught her off guard and drugged her, so why didn't he keep her? Because he is far from finished, she thought, letting that seep into her brain. She shuddered and quickly walked to her room to change clothes so she could pre-bag it for Forensics. In the time it took for her to grab a fresh shirt, she heard sirens approaching her building.

Detective Tutuola walked in to find his friend sitting on the edge of her couch unconsciously flicking her fingernails. He had expected worse. Well, to be honest, he hadn't expected any of this after the events at the harbor. After she went missing he knew it had to have been White and there was no way they were supposed to find her that easily. He didn't even find her, she just appeared. None of this made sense, but that made it worse. He knew this was just a break in the action and that in no way did this guarantee Olivia was safe or that Elliot was alive. Brian was dead and that death was excruciatingly calculated.

"Uh, hi," Olivia said quietly as Fin approached her location on the couch and sat beside her, patting her shoulder as if to tell her everything will be fine. She shifted to give him room next to her, thankful for the positive human contact.

"So…" Fin started, uncharacteristically apprehensive as to how to begin this conversation. He hoped Liv had it in her to acknowledge the next steps and that he didn't have to be the one to remind her that she still needed to follow protocol and go into the hospital for an exam.

"Yeah. I know. I don't know. I mean, why the fuck am I here, Fin? You saw Brian, you saw the note…" she didn't know how to continue without crying or continuing to break all of her glassware. She saw him move to say something and stopped him. "I can't talk through it right now—ongoing strategies or really anything. Can I just get through the exam and then we can talk back at the precinct?"

"Sure." At this point, he wasn't about to say no to just about anything that would have come out of her mouth, "I will drive you in so we don't have to call a bus."

She nodded in acquiescence and grabbed a coat out of the closet as they walked out to his car. She didn't, however, notice the small, crumpled piece of paper bulging every so slightly in her coat pocket.


End file.
